


Swam Upward from the Troubled Heart of May;

by confessingly



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, MWPP Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-21
Updated: 2012-02-21
Packaged: 2017-10-31 13:30:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/344547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/confessingly/pseuds/confessingly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"—there’s no need, he tells himself, to be long-faced every minute, people need laughter in dark times, and exams happen, and matter, especially now."</p><p>Their seventh year is one of contrasts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Swam Upward from the Troubled Heart of May;

Their seventh year is one of contrasts. It begins innocently with James asking Lily on a date to Hogsmeade for the fifty-seventh time since he decided he was going to marry her, Lily’s fifty-seventh refusal, thirty-six seconds of thought, and her ultimate acceptance. That evening, as James knocks over three glasses of pumpkin juice in a daze, Merry Dearborn opens up the evening edition of the Prophet beside Remus and weeps into a picture of her brother.

It is hard to remember that there is a war going on, in other parts of the country, people fighting and losing and dying, and Remus knows that this war is different, this isn’t Grindelwald, who only needed one talented wizard to take him down, this is _a group effort_. Still when James rips the curtains from his bed and shouts: she kissed me!, Remus smiles; when Peter gets a good mark in Transfiguration, they celebrate with smuggled firewhiskey—there’s no need, he tells himself, to be long-faced every minute, people need laughter in dark times, and exams happen, and matter, especially now. So he listens to Binns talk about goblin wars while Sirius flicks rubber bands at Edgecombe and out in the corridor sees Merry clutching her books to her chest and looking like a ghost and tries not to think too much about all these contrasts, which are uncomfortably parallel to his entire life.

They finish their NEWTs on a nearly perfect day in early May, he and James turning in their Arithmancy exams an hour before everyone else, he because he’d studied so much and James because everything comes to Potters as naturally as breathing, and it doesn’t even matter that it’s the full moon that night because it feels so good to be done.

Remus nearly skips down to the lake, actually does skip for a few steps before James jabs him playfully and makes fun, and they meet Sirius and Peter and Lily by the water, and he thinks he might never forget the sight, her with the bottle-green hairbow that makes her look like Christmas and Sirius lounging beside her, he’s Padfoot even when he’s not, tongue nearly lolling out; Renoir himself could not have painted a better sight. Peter’s brought out Remus’s record player, and his records, without asking, but at least he doesn’t have to fetch it himself, he thinks, and they pass the afternoon like that, the Squid surfacing every now and again, Lily’s hand in James’s hair and Sirius half on top of Remus but all his weight on Peter, and blues scales sliding across the water. He feels like the luckiest boy—man—alive.

He doesn’t remember that night, but he wakes up the next morning on the floor of the Shrieking Shack without any scratches, beside Padfoot, Prongs, and Wormtail, huddled together against the chilly dawn, light shafting across the splintery boards; he smiles.

At breakfast that morning, as Sirius recounts their adventures to Remus, James receives an owl from his parents and leaves the Great Hall at once. They find him with Lily, which Remus supposes is to be expected, and he appreciates that Sirius does not say anything rude to her, though he knows his friend is aching to. Dragon pox, says James, and the Healers don’t expect they have long, and Sirius goes quiet too, still, actually, down to his bones, for the first time since Remus has known him, and Remus should feel bad for the pair of them but he remembers instead their shared summers with James’s parents, hundreds of adventures he has never been a part of, thicker than thieves, James and Sirius, and Remus always came too late, when the fun had worn off and they only wanted to wrestle and smoke and lay about the house all day.

They go off then, James, Sirius, and Lily, and he is left to pass the time with Peter, who wants to go to the library and look up everything there is to be found on dragon pox, so Remus abandons him in the Restricted Section and goes back to Gryffindor Tower. He lays on his bed and listens to records but it sounds almost tinny in the little round dormitory, less unforced, like a helpless creature struggling inside of a box.

Sirius and James return, after dark, and sitting on his bed they tell him the truth, fresh from the Headmaster: it’s not dragon pox. The Potters were cursed by Death Eaters, a malignant curse that is working away at their insides, decaying them, and Remus feels sick to his stomach, feels small for his jealousy, and thinks, at least he has healthy parents to return to.

But this is a war, and not a war in foreign fields, but a war in cottages and on bridges and in alleys, and so the morning after that, he doesn’t.

James and Sirius and Peter are with him every second after that, and Lily is an immeasurable help, too. She handles the details he cannot bring himself to think about and James pays for someone to clean up the blood and Sirius, when no one is looking at the funeral, Sirius holds his hand, presses his forehead to Remus’s, whispers words of encouragement. After the service, Dumbledore comes to him and speaks to him directly for the first time since the time they flooded the Slytherin common room in third year. What are your plans now, Remus? His eyes seem to see everything.

It takes him a moment to remember: he has none. The shock of death has swallowed up all else.

I have an option for you, says Dumbledore very slowly. For all four of you. It is dangerous, and it does not pay well. But it is a good option.

Remus realizes, years later, that Dumbledore had planned it this way, knew to ask in the wake of a tragedy, because that is how people work. Four young men wracked with grief caused by Dark wizards, where else would they turn? Four young wasted lives, Remus will think bitterly, and accept Dumbledore’s next offer anyways.


End file.
